Flexible wrapping materials of various kinds are known in the art. These include paper-based, foil-based, and plastics-based materials of various kinds. Some materials are better than others to suit the needs and/or limitations of a particular application setting. For example, materials having good dead-fold characteristics (such as many paper-based and foil-based materials and some plastics-based materials) are well suited to application settings where a final package will benefit from well-defined lines and contours. Many plastics-based materials, on the other hand, are particularly well suited to cost-effective, high-speed packaging environments where the manufacturer seeks a hermetic or nearly-hermetic seal.
Unfortunately, few (if any) materials are well suited to all application settings. For example, the benefits of plastics-based materials, such as flow-wrapping materials, are hard to achieve when also seeking to provide a final package having well-defined lines and contours (and particularly in the absence of an internal frame, tray, or the like). This may be because typical flow-wrapping materials exhibit little in the way of dead-fold characteristics. As a result, the manufacturer must often be satisfied with using inner paperboard trays or boxes and then wrapping the plastics-based material tightly and conformally about the tray/box in order to achieve the desired well-defined lines and contours of the final package.
In the absence of a solution to this technical problem, manufacturers must typically choose either between cost-effective packaging that fails to offer a desired form factor or less cost-effective packaging when demanding a well-defined form factor.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein